Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past. George Orwell
The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. Albert Einstein
Because men really respect only that which was founded of old and has developed slowly, he who wants to live on after his death must take care not only of his posterity but even more of his past. Friedrich Nietzsche
The past is all holy to us; the dead are all holy; even they that were wicked when alive. Thomas Carlyle
Study the past if you would divine the future. Confucius
Therefore Agathon rightly says: “Of this alone even God is deprived, the power of making things that are past never to have been.” Aristotle
The past is a work of art, free of irrelevancies and loose ends. Max Beerbohm
The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause. Henri Louis Bergson
Not heaven itself upon the past has power/But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour. John Dryden
Oh! the good times when we were so unhappy. Alexandre Dumas (the elder)
Living the past is a dull and lonely business; looking back strains the neck muscles, causes you to bump into people not going your way. Edna Ferber
With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame. George Eliot
Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time. Francis Bacon